


A Chill inside, Coldness in the Eyes

by AtomicPen



Series: Wings Straight and Swift Will Bring Us Home [6]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Pre-Game(s), Vael Family - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-22 18:24:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4845725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtomicPen/pseuds/AtomicPen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Duty and Honor to the family, these were the things that bound him. He never thought anyone could understand, and he could never be convinced otherwise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Chill inside, Coldness in the Eyes

“Here, toss another on the fire. You’re making me chilly just looking at you like that.”

“Thanks. It’s a lot colder down here than I’m used to.” He took the slender log from his cousin and laid it into the fire, crossing the charred others already feeding the flames. Standing closer to the fire, the light danced off his face, the flickering shadows casting sharp angles.

She watched his mouth tighten, his eyes follow the movement of the fire licking up the sides of the wood. It was a crisp autumn evening, but to her, he seemed to be shaking from something other than the chill in the air. It wasn’t like him.

“Anything you’d like to talk about?” she asked, stretching her legs out to warm her feet.

He shot her a look that twisted one side of his mouth. “You know very well what weighs heavily on my mind, Eleanor.”

She took her eyes from him and gazed up at the night sky, spattered with tiny lights. The way he said her name told her all she needed to know about how agitated he was inside. “Have you told your parents yet?”

“No–!” He shook his head, a quick shadowy movement at the edge of her vision. “You don’t understand, this isn’t something they can ever know.”

The breath of hysteria slid along his words like a threatening undercurrent, and she lowered her chin to look at him again. He stood too near the fire, arms folded tightly against his chest. A line drew across her brow at the way he wavered for a moment, almost as if he wanted to plunge into the flames–she shook her head a little. No, that had to be a trick of the light. She put her hands in her lap and studied them.

“Trystan, if you’re worried what they’ll think, you shouldn’t be. It’s certainly not unheard of–”

He kicked a stone into the fire, upsetting the embers and sending bits of glowing ash into the air for a moment. “I’m the  _heir_. It doesn’t matter if they wanted me to feel this, I have a duty to Starkhaven in my future. That is not something I can abandon.”

That gave her a moment’s pause. Her fingers wove around one another as she considered her words. “You do… have brothers,” she said finally, her voice soft beside the fire’s crackle. “And,” she she went on, lifting her eyes to him, “you have now.”

Trystan scowled into the fire, heedless of the smoke drifting around him. “My brothers wouldn’t take it seriously enough and… what do you mean by I ‘have now’?”

She shrugged. “You said it yourself. Your duty to Starkhaven lies in the future. That’s then, and this is now.”

He tore his eyes from the flames and embers to stare at her, his coppery face flushed enough that she could see it in the dim light. “What?” he breathed.

A softly exasperated breath left her. “You’re not Prince right now, and won’t be for quite some time… and you’re not in Starkhaven.”

“I…” he began, turning fully toward her as she got her feet beneath her and stood, brushing bits of dirt and grass from her pants. “You’re suggesting…?”

A half-smile tugged at her lips as she walked over to him, rested a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, cousin. I have a friend or two I think you should meet. Go get some of your mother’s whisky–I know she brought some–and I’ll meet you back here. They’re nice guys, and I think you might hit it off with one of them.”

“And you don’t–you don’t think–?”

Eleanor laughed quietly. “You confided in me, and I want to show you that trust was not misplaced.” She drew him into a hug, and he hesitantly wrapped his arms around her. “I love you, cuz, don’t forget that. No matter who you like or don’t like,” she said, voice muffled against the woolen collar of his coat.

Drawing back, she released him and flashed a smile. “I’ll be back–and you better have that whisky for us.”

Still mildly dumbfounded–worried–by what she had just so casually suggested to him, Trystan watched her turn and fade into the blackness outside their ring of firelight. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate her unconditional acceptance or her efforts to make him feel better–but he just wasn’t sure she really  _understood_. He let out a soft sigh and drew a leather-wrapped flask from one of the hidden pockets in his coat. He had confided one of the largest secrets of his life to his cousin, yes, but she didn’t need to know everything about him.

A hundred emotions and anxieties roiled within his gut as he sipped on the sharp whisky and watched the flames, waiting for her return, be it for good or ill.


End file.
